Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.

There is a peaceful way out. But then the discussion has to go into a religious sphere. [...]

Rubbish, stop pushing your imaginary antiques at every opportunity - they evolved when we were hunter-gatherers, most of their time was then, in very brutal times, and its better to leave them there, in the past.
Stop spreading everywhere your empty mental masturbations which don't survive confrontation with the simplest demographical statistics.

Just look at the map of the world sometimes.

Religious places are generally, on average, most backward on all levels; OTOH there's definitely a correlation between organic lower religiosity and positive societal factors. The places which are most secular (as in actually secular, not just being called like that by official PR) are generally by far the nicest to live in.

(and before you point out, say, state atheism in the eastern block like most simpletons do - those places actually weren't irreligious, that's known by everybody who lived there ...curiously, there's no phenomena of "unbaptised generation" & virtually all Party members were closet practitioners; also, the ideologies, cult of personality, etc. were really quite religious in nature - the most striking present example is Juche; North Korea is described by some visiting commentators as the most religious country on the planet they've seen)

Coincidentally, I'm from one of most backwards like that places in Europe... and also, by chance, neighbouring some major (this time counting worldwide) secular areas - and not in the sense of "neglect", in the sense that majority there declares they do not believe in any collection of myths...

...startling difference / it's a joy to visit / so much nicer it's not funny. It is funny to point this out to "deeply religious" people who were there on a visit, usually didn't realize the specifics of the place (it's not like the places advertise their irreligion, contrary to what those grabbed in religious dynamics tend to do / jump in your face), and describe their visit very much in superlatives - how the people are nicer, how they feel safer, how surroundings are better maintained ...also religious monuments; but that's it, in many ways those are just cultural artefacts, protected by law, of the past eras)